May I present the news in June

Alexander Finbow - Thursday, June 02, 2016

This year races down the track towards 2017 without pause. Along the way through April and May, we made pit stops at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, the Toronto Comic and Arts Festival, McNally Robinson and at media organizations across Canada. Meanwhile, hundreds of wonderful readers took home copies of Arctic Comics, making the Nunavut set comics anthology our fastest selling bookstore release so far in Canada.

Arctic Comics has spent 3 happy weeks on the McNally Robinson Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, holding the top spot for the first week. The launch event in Winnipeg went really well, with a good crowd turning out to see Nicholas Burns, George Freeman, Lovern Kindzierski and Laurie E. Smith talk about putting the book together. CBC Winnipeg ran interviews with Michael Kusugak and Nicholas Burns, with Michael also turning up on radio stations in Nunavut and Alberta.

Progress continues on new Renegade books, including September's Shame trilogy Collected Hardcover, which will include a ton of work in progress and behind the scenes material from Lovern Kindzierski and John Bolton, as well as the opening pages from the first book in their follow-up trilogy Tales of Hope. It's looking gorgeous and will be followed by Tales of Hope book 1 in spring 2017. Gordon Rennie emailed to tell us that he started writing the script for the third book in the Dept of Monsterology series, which means we should be able to publish sometime in mid 2017. We've also had a great pitch in from Jeff Martin for a new graphic novel about a Canadian couple's experiences during the Korean War which we hope to confirm as an addition to our roster very soon. Another new creator to join the Renegade fold is Nyco Rudolph, who is working on a delightful tale of Bears standing up for their rights.

In the realm of digital reading, we've signed on to Comixology Unlimited for the launch, hoping to introduce our stories and creators to new readers via what is being described as the Netflix for comics. We'll see how the first year goes. In other news, we'll be part of the inaugural Panel One Comic Creators Festival this Saturday, June 4th, 12pm-7pm at the Hillhurst Community Centre in Calgary. Join us and some of Alberta's best graphic novelists, cartoonists and comic book creators for a day focused purely on creating stories. Artists and writers are running workshops throughout the day on all aspects of creating stories. For more information click this sentence.